The bookends approach to reading

Saturday, December 3, 2022

Literacy scholar Maryanne Wolf, author of Reader, Come Home, on The Ezra Klein Show describing her “bookends” routine of beginning and ending the day with books:

I begin my day with meditation. And then reading at least 20 minutes a philosophical or theological or spiritual or sometimes political — something that will absolutely take me out of myself and center me, completely center my thinking. Slow it down. It prepares me for, if you will, clearing the deck of whatever detritus from the night or even the day before. And readying myself with a particular mind-set for whatever the day brings.

And then at the end of the day, I do two things that may or may not be helpful to people, especially people with young children. And that is I have to find a way for the world of imagination to take me away from the work of the day. Sometimes it’s films; sometimes it’s novels; but it has to be something truly in the world of imagination for me. And then I end that because I don’t want to be on a screen at the very end of my day.

I often end it with some essay by Montaigne. I mean, that sounds really strange. But he was the first essay writer. And those essays are sometimes really funny, sometimes really boring. But whatever they are they give me a kind of peace that I find in very few places. Wendell Berry, Marcus Aurelius, those are the kinds of people who make me feel the peace at the end of the day is something that is really well, well worth striving for. So I end and I begin each day with books.

I like this a lot. (And I love Montaigne.)

I always read fiction before bed to help put me in the dream state, but I also really enjoy reading in the morning. (Instead of opening Twitter, I try to reach for a book or open the Kindle app.)

If you modded this a little bit and threw in some lunchtime reading, you could do Ray Bradbury’s one essay/one poem/one short story plan. (I might prefer nonfiction in the morning, but Kingsley Amis swore by poetry as a hangover cure.)

This is the time of year people tally how many books they’ve read and set goals for the next year, but if you really want to build a reading habit, I think you’re better off committing to a certain amount of reading a day vs. a certain number of books read over the year. (Somewhat related: “Quantity leads to quality.”)

The art of imperfection

Friday, December 2, 2022

I was inspired to draw out this matrix after stumbling upon a website for a show called “Less Than Perfect” that ran at the Kelsey Museum of Archeology in 2016. The exhibition was organized around three themes:

Failed Perfection presents objects that failed in production and explores how researchers use them to study ancient economy and technologies.

Deliberate Imperfection features beautiful and finely crafted objects whose makers purposely introduced asymmetries or other unexpected elements into their products—and considers why artists may choose to make imperfect things.

Repairing Perfection highlights artifacts that were repaired in antiquity and asks why and how individuals worked to restore usefulness and beauty to certain broken, worn out, or damaged objects.

A lot of what I love in art is “deliberate imperfection,” which you see in everything from Japanese wabi-sabi to Navajo rugs to punk rock.

Mistakes or “happy accidents” that don’t get thrown out, like mishearings that lead to new ideas.

Chance operations, introductions of asymmetry, invitations to weirdness and error, and what Sally Mann calls “praying to the angel of uncertainty” in Hold Still:

“I tried to remain flexible and open to the vagaries of chance; like Napoleon, I figured that luck, aesthetic luck included, is just the ability to exploit accidents. I grew to welcome the ripply flaws caused by a breeze or tiny mote of dust, which ideally would settle right where I needed a comet-like streak, or the emulsion the peeled away from the plate in the corner where I hadn’t liked that telephone line anyway. Unlike the young narrator in Swann’s Way praying for the angel of certainty to visit him in his bedroom, I found myself praying for the angel of uncertainty. And many times she visited my plates, bestowing upon them essential peculiarities, persuasive consequence, intrigue, drama, and allegory.”

I also think of Lee “Scratch” Perry and his mystical approach to the studio:

He would often “bless” his recording equipment with mystical invocations, blow ganja smoke onto his tapes while recording, bury unprotected tapes in the soil outside of his studio, and surround himself with burning candles and incense, whose wax and dust remnants were allowed to infest his electronic recording equipment. He would also spray tapes with a variety of fluids, including urine, blood and whisky, ostensibly to enhance their spiritual properties. Later commentators have drawn a direct relationship between the decay of Perry’s facility and the unique sounds he was able to create from his studio equipment.

Repair, healing or mending, and leaving the repair visible, a la kintsugi:

I got to thinking about all this because my mom texted me a cool diagram of a loom from an exhibit of Navajo Weavings at the Colonial Williamsburg Art Museum and I asked her if she knew about the deliberate imperfections they introduce into their rugs:

In Navajo culture, rug weavers would leave little imperfections along the borders in the shape of a line called ch’ihónít’i, which is translated into English as “spirit line” or “spirit pathway. The Navajos believe that when weaving a rug, the weaver entwines part of her being into the cloth. The spirit line allows this trapped part of the weaver’s spirit to safely exit the rug….

The Navajos also believe that only God is perfect and that humans cannot achieve the same perfect level. So they make sure to leave little imperfection in anything they create. Usually, one has to look very close to find the imperfection, so it does not detract from the beauty of the item. It might be a loose piece of yarn, or a different colored bead.

(That whole post is worth reading.)

Filed under: imperfection

RIP Tom Phillips

Wednesday, November 30, 2022

The great Tom Phillips has died. (Here is a very good obituary in the Guardian.)

My blackout work is indebted to his masterpiece, A Humument.

He was extremely prolific, and I have it on good authority that he was working up until the very end on a collage. Here is one of them:

One of the great art experiences of my life was visiting Marvin and Ruth Sackner’s penthouse in Miami, Florida to see their archive, which included a ton of Humument pieces but also really rare pieces like this globe:

tom phillips globe
I never got to meet Tom, but we did exchange emails. He thanked me for “the nod of honest debt” I paid in a talk about the history of blackout poetry, and then he sent me something remarkable, a “skeleton version” of a slide lecture he used to give, called “Raphael to Eno,” tracking the lineage of his student, Brian Eno (another hero of mine), all the way back to Raphael in 20 moves.

I don’t think he’d mind if I reproduced it, so here it is:

Brian Eno to Raphael in 20 moves, in the words of Tom Phillips:

BRIAN ENO (b. 1948) the pupil of

TOM PHILLIPS (1937-2022) the pupil of

FRANK AUERBACH (b. 1931) the pupil of

DAVID BOMBERG (1890 – 1957) who studied with

W.R. SICKERT (1860 – 1942) who studied with

EDGAR DEGAS (1834 – 1917) who studied with

J.A.D. INGRES (1780 – 1867) who studied with

J.L. DAVID (1748 – 1825) who was the pupil of

J.M. VIEN (b. Montpelier 1716 d. Paris 1809. He was head of the school at Rome and also designed masques etc. Buried in the Pantheon. Stiffish neo-classicist who studied under

C.J. NATOISE (b. Paris 1700 d. Paris 1777) who also directed the French School at Rome. Designed tapestries and decorations and was unusual in that he provided a garden of classical sculpture for his students to draw in. He was the pupil of

F. LE MOINE (b. Paris 1688 d. Paris 1737) who painted the Hercules Room at Versailles and was Premier Peintre du Roi. Committed suicide after a period of setbacks and emotional turbulence. He was the pupil of

L. GALLOCHE (b. Paris 1670 d. Paris 1761) who was also a musician. Made a journey to Rome. Lodgings in Louvre. Pupil of

LOUIS DE BOULOGNE LE JEUNE (b. Paris 1654 – d. Paris 1733) who copied Raphael Frescoes for the Gobelins Tapestry works. Also Premier Peintre du Roi. Studied under his father

LOUIS DE BOULOGNE LE VIEUX (b. Paris 1609 d. Paris 1674) who worked at Versailles and was one of the founders of The Academy. Pupil of

JACQUES BLANCHARD (b. Paris 1600 d. Paris 1638) who was called “The French Titian” and had been much influenced by work seen on a trip to Venice. He was the pupil of

NICOLAS BOLLERY of whom little is known except that he died in Paris in 1630 and studied under his father

JEROME BOLLERY who was active in Paris from 1530 onwards. He was the assistant to

PRIMATICCIO (1504 -1570) when he worked on The Louvre. Primaticcio was the head of the School of Fontainbleu and was the assistant of

GIULIO ROMANO (1499 – 1546) in the decoration of the Palazzo Té etc. G.R. the only non-English painter mentioned by Shakespeare. He entered at the age of 10 the studio of

RAPHAEL (1483 – 1520) of whom little need be said by way of explanation.

Phillips claimed Eno was the only decent student he had.

“I used to teach,” he said. “Gave it up as soon as I could.”

If you consider Phillips’ work + his pupil’s, his influence on the culture is huge.

I cannot claim to be his pupil, but I studied him, and as I have written elsewhere, the thing about the masters is they can’t really refuse you as a student. They leave their lesson plans in their work.

Thank you, Tom.

Riding or writing

Tuesday, November 29, 2022

One of my riding partners is hard of hearing, so sometimes I’ll say I was “writing” and he thinks I’ve said, “riding.” (Or vice versa.) I’m thinking of getting another version of this shirt made that says, “I would but I’m writing that day.” But the truth is, a lot of my writing comes from my riding these days… (Photo by my pal Marty from yesterday evening’s impromptu ride.)